At 10:30pm on May 4, 1970, approximately 1,500 UVA students gathered on the Lawn to protest the murder of four student activists at Kent State University earlier that day. On April 28, 1983, a group of 100 students marched up to the office of Student Affairs Vice President Ernest Ern and presented a list of demands, including the admission of more black students, the hiring of more black faculty, and an increase in the amount of financial aid for black students. In 1991, a Cavalier Daily opinion columnist wrote: “The world around us is buzzing with black political activism.”

The University of Virginia has a reputation as a hidebound and conservative place, where seersucker reigns supreme and change comes slowly. But progressive political activism has always been present on Grounds. For decades, UVA students have banded together to protest against all manner of injustices.

Today’s students are building on the activism of their forebears.

“Some of my friends were at the big bicentennial celebration on the Lawn, with a big banner that just says ‘200 years of white supremacy,’” says UVA student Corey Runkel, a member of the Living Wage Campaign at UVA. “We found an image from 1970, when they were trying to do co-education… They had a sign that said ‘150 years of white supremacy.’ It was interesting to see that history.”

Runkel, a third-year, has been a part of the Living Wage Campaign since shortly after his arrival at the school. Founded in the late ‘90s, the group has advocated for the rights of workers around Grounds, lobbying the administration to raise the minimum wage for the university’s employees. In 2006, 17 students occupied Madison Hall for four days before President John Casteen had them arrested.

The campaign scored a significant victory earlier this year, when President Jim Ryan announced that 1,400 full-time employees would receive $15 an hour by January 2020.

“When I was a first-year, people that didn’t know about Living Wage directly would never talk about it,” Runkel says. The group kept pushing, though, and managed to force the university into action.

Other students fight for different issues. The Virginia Student Environmental Coalition “engages in political advocacy, education, and direct action around environmental and social justice,” says leader Joyce Cheng. Recently, VSEC organized to slow down the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Before that, the group lobbied the university administration to divest from fossil fuels.

“When the Atlantic Coast Pipeline opposition was really heightened, a couple semesters ago, we were really close with the people in Buckingham County,” Cheng says. “We have tried to strengthen the bonds between the university and the community.”

Many of UVA’s activist groups focus on issues beyond the university’s walls. Political Latinxs United for Movement and Action in Society concentrates on “having really close ties with the community,” says Diana Tinta, one of the group’s members. That could mean anything from hosting an open mic night to organizing dinners and donating profits to refugees in Charlottesville.

Recently, PLUMAS painted Beta Bridge to protest the Albermarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail’s relationship with ICE. Activities like painting the bridge can galvanize students, and “that’s given us a lot of momentum,” Tinta says.

The Living Wage Campaign, VSEC, and PLUMAS represent just a small sample of activist organizations at the university. UVA Students United has organized around a variety of social justice issues; the Queer Student Union advocates for UVA’s LGBTQ+ population; the Black Student Alliance has been a catalyst for political activism since its founding in the 1960s. The list of activist organizations at UVA goes on and on. The school is chock full of passionate and innovative students.

Nevertheless, UVA’s activists themselves remain generally pessimistic about the role of political activism in the university’s culture. Despite the long history of action and the proliferation of progressive groups, some organizers still feel like the stereotypes about UVA’s apathetic political climate hold more than a little truth.

“I think it’s probably apt to say that this is not a place that is known for political activism,” Runkel says. “We’ve found it a very difficult place to organize.”

Runkel ascribed this difficulty to the less-than-revolutionary politics of many UVA students. “Part of it is a sort of self-separation from the rest of UVA life. We’re fairly radical, relative to other groups.”

Cheng echoes Runkel’s lament. “[Mobilizing students] is something, to be honest, I think we struggle with, just because UVA students are so busy and so involved in all their different commitments,” she says. “UVA is very closed off to student activism.”

Tinta, too, believes most UVA students are insufficiently engaged. “I don’t think that students are active enough in advocating for issues, especially when it comes to advocating for the Charlottesville community,” she says. “There are a bunch of groups that do great work, but I think that all these works need more collaboration and more support, which I don’t think that UVA students really give.”

So while many groups are working hard for a wide variety of progressive causes, student activism continues to exist on the periphery of the school’s consciousness, and that relationship shows little sign of changing. As long as that remains true, UVA’s activists know they have more work to do.

Primary day is June 11, and there’s more on the ballot than the 57th District race between Kathy Galvin and Sally Hudson. If you live in the city, the three people who win the Democratic nomination will likely be the ones to fill the three empty seats on City Council in November because

More than a year and a half after a freelance reporter requested the Virginia State Police and the Office of Public Safety turn over its Unite the Right public safety plans, a judge ruled today that it’s time for the state to cough them up—although with some confusion about redaction and

The reliably Democratic 57th District rarely makes for an exciting horse race. Once a delegate, always a delegate, as David Toscano and Mitch Van Yahres before him proved, each easily holding on to the seat representing Charlottesville and the Albemarle urban ring as long as he chose. Not this

By Shrey Dua Just months out from the blackface scandal that rocked Virginia’s Democratic leadership and threatened Ralph Northam’s governorship, all of 10 people showed up May 15 to learn about UVA’s history of blackface. At a talk that was one of several held last week as part of the city’s

Special interests If you’ve got an agenda, you’ve gotta have a PAC. A political action committee is the device of choice for individuals, corporations, developers, teachers, and many others to further their interests by funneling money or other support to political candidates. While a PAC is

By Carroll Trainum On Thursday, May 16, at least a hundred people stood in line at the demolition site of University Hall—the former hub of UVA basketball—to get a brick. They all had their own memories of U-Hall, known to some as “the house that Ralph built,” and they wanted a piece of

By Ali Sullivan After four months of surveys, conversations, community gatherings and focus groups, the committee formed by University of Virginia President Jim Ryan to evaluate the relationship between the university and the surrounding community released its final report in February. UVA

Tucked on the fourth floor of Newcomb Hall in back of UVA’s Academical Village are offices of the student-run committee that investigates, charges, and tries fellow students accused of lying, cheating, or stealing. Its bylaws require panels to hand down the same punishment for any single

UVA President Jim Ryan, a law school alum and former faculty member, took office August 1, just before the anniversary of the Unite the Right violence. As the year went on, he announced a new School of Data Science and watched the men’s basketball team take home its first-ever national

Another Tar-jay? Local mogul Coran Capshaw’s Riverbend Development has plans for the former Kmart shopping center on Hydraulic, now known as Hillsdale Place. The company went before the Planning Commission May 14 for entrance corridor approval (after C-VILLE went to press). The plans keep the

Two men convicted of malicious wounding for attacking DeAndre Harris in a downtown parking garage on August 12, 2017, are appealing their convictions, and the Virginia Attorney General’s office will now prosecute their cases. Jacob Goodwin and Alex Ramos were sentenced to eight and six years in

Some issues don’t just go away if you ignore them. Aside from a brief appearance at the May 6 City Council meeting, the last time we heard from UVA alum Guy Lopez was 2002, when the university was considering whether to invest $4 million in the University of Arizona’s Mount Graham Observatory

It’s National Bike Month, and Peter Krebs is fired up. Krebs, who’s the community outreach coordinator at the Piedmont Environmental Council, uses the word “exciting” more than any other when talking about the new bicycle and pedestrian plan he’s helped develop with the Thomas Jefferson

Charlottesville is a growing city. We’ve added 5,000 residents since 2010, with another 10,000 in the county. And by 2040, projections from the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service show an additional 6,000 people in Charlottesville and 33,500 in the county (roughly), bringing our total

They appeared overnight the first Monday in December of 2018, long-necked robots on wheels, lurking in neat rows of three or four on street corners all over town. Within a few days, the motorized scooters, which don’t have designated docking stations, were everywhere, and wherever. Now, about

More than 100 people representing a dozen organizations rallied and marched in support of residents of Belmont Apartments May 5, the same day tenants whose leases have expired were told to vacate their apartments at 1000 Monticello Rd. The Charlottesville Low-Income Housing Coalition gathered

Judge Rick Moore got one big issue out of the way in the two-years-long lawsuit against the city and City Council for its 2017 vote to remove statues of Confederate generals: The monuments of generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are indeed war memorials under state code, which prohibits

Though the gifted education program in Charlottesville City Schools has recently come under fire for its racial disparities, such gaps have existed since the program was created in 1976, and may have even been part of its intention. At tonight’s School Board meeting, former Charlottesville High

Governor Ralph Northam approved the University of Virginia’s proposal to renovate Alderman Library on March 24, sending the $160 million project into development. The renovation, which has been planned since 2016, involves removing a significant percentage of the library’s books and turning its

To the list of racial disparities in Charlottesville and Albemarle County, we can add arrest rates: According to a new study, African Americans are booked at significantly higher rates than whites at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail, and the greatest disproportionality occurs during